Sogong Wahyudi
"He told us what he was on the first day. We have been learning what that means ever since."
First Impression
There is something clarifying about a man who announces his nature rather than waiting for you to discover it. Sogong Wahyudi said it plainly, without theater, in what was perhaps the second conversation any member of this party had with him: he is, by his own accounting, an evil person. He did not elaborate. He did not invite follow-up questions. He offered the information the way someone might mention the weather: relevant, apparently true, and not open to debate.
He is also, without question, the largest member of this company. The party has since concluded that these two facts are probably related, though no one has asked directly how.
The Self-Proclaimed Evil
He is not performing. This is the first thing worth understanding about Sogong, and the thing easiest to misread. The appearance is not adopted for effect; the proclamation is not irony dressed as self-awareness. He looks the part because he is the part, or at least some version of it that he has settled into with the comfort of someone who stopped arguing with themselves a long time ago. Something in his history bent him in the direction he now faces. He has chosen to keep facing it.
What that something was remains his own business. He has not shared it. He does not appear to intend to. The self-description stands alone, unsupported by context, which is either honest or deliberately incomplete, and the party has not yet determined which.
The Shield That Remains
And yet.
When a companion is in danger, Sogong does not calculate. The shield comes up. The Sanctuary goes out. It is not a policy; it is a reflex, and it is a paladin's reflex specifically: the one that persists after everything else about an oath has been discarded, broken, or simply grown too heavy to carry. He moves to cover his companions with the automatic certainty of someone who was built for exactly this and has not stopped being built for it, regardless of what he tells people about himself.
The party has noticed. No one has said anything directly, because the kind of man who announces he is evil tends to be the kind of man you do not openly interrogate about the gap between his words and his actions. They have filed it away. They are watching. Beneath the bulk, the glower, and the self-assessment, something in Sogong Wahyudi is still standing guard. Whether he knows it, and whether he would admit it if he did, are two questions with answers he has not volunteered.
Anaik's Gamble
Anaik recruited him. This is worth examining, because Anaik's recruitment method consisted primarily of noticing that Sogong is very large and appears structurally resistant to a significant amount of incoming damage, and concluding that this was reason enough to bring him along. It was a purely pragmatic assessment, conducted with no particular interest in the finer details of personality, alignment, or stated self-identification as an evil person. Anaik has never expressed regret about this. Sogong has never expressed anything about it at all.
What Anaik calculated: a body that could absorb what the rest of the party could not. What the party received: that, and something else they have not yet found the right word for.
The Unknown Ledger
His goals are his own. This is the cleanest way to state something the party has come to understand without anyone spelling it out. Sogong Wahyudi does not discuss his past with any apparent willingness. He does not explain his choices, his silences, or his continued presence in a company he joined under, from his side of the arrangement, entirely unclear terms.
What motivates him? The evil-person explanation covers the surface and nothing beneath it. There is something underneath: there always is, with a man who wears his worst quality on the outside and keeps everything else locked behind it. Whether the party will learn what it is, whether it will come out on its own in some unguarded moment, or whether it will remain his until the moment it finally matters most, is uncertain. What is not uncertain is this: when the moment comes, he will be standing in front of them.
Known Traits
- Paladin (Oathbreaker)
- Sanctuary
- Aura of Protection
- Unholy Smite
- Channel Divinity
- Self-Proclaimed Evil
- Largest in the Party
- Impenetrable Motive
The Question This Chapter Must Answer
He is the biggest, the most durable, and the most opaque member of this party. He calls himself evil. He raises his shield for the people beside him. Both things are true at the same time, and the space between them is where his story actually lives. The question his chapter must answer is not whether he will protect this party; he will, and that much is no longer in doubt. The question is why. And whether, when the answer finally surfaces, it will be something the party was prepared to carry.
Notable Moments
Entries will be added as the chronicle unfolds. Record what this man does when it counts, and let the record speak for itself.
Bonds & Relationships
[Record Sogong's relationships as the story unfolds. Note especially: his connection to Anaik, who brought him here, and whatever the party eventually learns about what he is actually after.]